


Changed Fates

by Merfilly



Series: Big Bang Transformers Verse [1]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Community: ladiesbigbang, Female Protagonist, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the 2007 movie redone. Mikaela takes the front seat, and drives the action in this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Changed Fates

**Author's Note:**

> **Fanmix:** [Have You Got It In You?](http://angel-negra.dreamwidth.org/240163.html) by Angel_negra@dreamwidth.org
> 
> I want to say thank you to the many people who encouraged me to write this, as well as to the legion of folks who stepped in to make it flow better. All of you made this project a fun thing for me to do.

It had all begun by meeting a boy who looked on her as an unobtainable goddess that he nonetheless had to try and reach. She wasn't sure why she had gotten on her scooter to follow the crazy boy on the bicycle in the first place, but she had, and now Mikaela was caught up in events larger than herself, the boy, or possibly even the giant robot-killer-assassin-thing that had turned itself into a cop car.

She was not even considering how much of a nightmare that was for her personally. Monsters and police had been synonymous in her head since she was a little girl.

Mikaela had no idea what to think once they came to a stop, trying to be safe by hiding. Between Sam tackling her off her scooter and seeing a giant robot chasing him, her suspension of disbelief for make-believe stories had suddenly crashed into the real world. She looked at Sam, really trying to see how this boy she hadn't even remembered as sharing her school, let alone her classes, could have gotten caught up in all this.

"The glasses, it's the glasses he wanted," Sam muttered to himself. "I'm positive that's the auction he said...it sa -- whatever I'm supposed to call a giant killer robot!"

Very softly, the radio played "Mr. Roboto" by Styx.

That was enough to make Mikaela look at the radio controls before thinking to herself that maybe, just maybe, the only thing worse than a geeky boy needing self-affirmation was a snarky, sentient robot. Because there was just no way that all of what she had seen could be some kind of program. Both the killer cop car and the yellow hunk of junk had used initiative and reactions in ways that went far beyond Deep Blue.

"So why not give over the glasses so you don't get killed?" Mikaela whispered. She could tell he was in pain, as he kept slipping his arm down to hold his side with one hand, like his ribs were sore, or worse. From the scrapes she could see, that killer Mr. Roboto had already managed to injure him somehow.

The radio played a snippet from _Star Trek_ , the klaxon warning for a red alert.

Mikaela focused on the car. "You'd better have an explanation for us when we’re clear," she told the radio. That she was talking back to the car-robot-thing was only one more indication of how strange her life had become since actively becoming aware of Sam Witwicky.

"I want to know, what you're thinking...," Information Society poured from his speakers.

"Exactly," Mikaela said, and then she had to quiet down because the entire thought of having a conversation between her words and the car's soundbites was just too much for her suspension of disbelief right now.

Sam stared at her, then his car, and then really looked at the car because the key was flipping over on its own.

"No no no... shit. Here we go again," he muttered.

"Been here for hours; it's gotten way dark now," Mikaela pointed out. She listened as the really sweet engine under that beat up hood had trouble catching, and then they were on the move again, roaring straight for the monster Saleen police car that had definitely not given up on wanting to eat them all. Still, the Camaro seemed to have a plan. Maybe, just maybe, she would survive this after all.

She was less sure of the sanctity of her life when the dubious safety of the yellow car was taken away as it threw them out. The Saleen quickly became a secondary concern, as a smaller killer robot launched itself at Sam. Sick of being the observer in all this, Mikaela cast about for any way she could help the boy escape his fate.

Mikaela scanned her surroundings, looking for anything she could use, and spied a work area, with its tools. She raced for it and quickly hunted for anything she could use to defeat the small, evil, machine-devil.

Hammers, screwdrivers... the pry bar looked promising... and then she found the portable power saw, useful in a scrapyard like the one they'd been dumped in. She jerked it up, and followed the sound of Sam screaming. She could be the knight in tarnished armor for him, even if the back of her brain told her he would never get over this fascination with her if she continued to be more than met the eye in his vicinity.

She got the saw powered up and was on the robot while it was still trying to kill Sam or at least incapacitate him, screaming something at it that her brain did not even process. She had no idea if this would work; she just had to save Sam. Sam was human, and that spiny metal demon was not.

The robot was spitting vicious sounding alien sounds as it turned to deal with her, but it didn't get to do so for long. She slashed a couple of quick cuts, and somehow came across at the right angle to sever its head from its body. The body stilled almost immediately, but, like some creepy horror flick prop, the head started trying to crawl on, slowly extending crab-like appendages.

That made her sweep it away with a swing of the saw, before she dropped her makeshift weapon and fell to a knee by Sam.

"Glasses... can't let them...." The boy was bruised, cut, and bleeding from his struggle with first, the monster Saleen, and now, the spiny, little demon-robot. "I left them in my backpack, in the kitchen..."

"Shh, Sam... shh." Mikaela calmly started bandaging what she could see, using his shirt and trying to fight down the panic. That lasted until Sam's eyes rolled up and he passed out. "SAM!"

The sound of metal crunching gravel made her tense, and she turned, already reaching for the saw. However, she stayed her hand when she saw it was the bright yellow and black robot, Sam's car, standing there.

"He needs a doctor."

The giant robot nodded, transforming into the crappy Camaro with the beautiful engine inside, waiting for her.

`~`~`~`~`

Putting Sam into the care of a hospital, without identification, trying to slow the ability of the more violent mechanoid creatures to find him took some very slick maneuvering by Mikaela, aided and abetted by the typical emergency room staff being too busy to notice that the new patient slipped in on a wheelchair wasn't officially checked in. Some blood was visible on his clothes, and the rest was all bureaucratic mistakes.

However, that left Mikaela with a ten foot tall robot who pretended to be Satan's Camaro, as Sam had called his car briefly in his snatches of consciousness on the way to the hospital.

"So what do we do now?" Mikaela asked tentatively after the Camaro had taken her away from the hospital.

" _I wear my sunglasses at night..._ " was the answer, the one Mikaela had actually dreaded hearing.

"Sam's in the hospital. How am I supposed to get something that's in his house?" Mikaela demanded.

" _We were told just to sit tight, cause somebody will soon arrive._ "

"More? Like you? Or like..." She shuddered at the thought, and the seat she was in molded a little closer to her, like it was hugging her. Something in the motion made her feel strangely calm; compassion and empathy were strong emotions for anyone to show.

" _Two hearts..._ "

"Both then." She stroked a hand over his cracked, dry steering wheel. "So we hook up with your friends, dodge the bad guys, and what? Hope that one of them has an idea?"

There was a bit of static, and then a sound bite from some movie came on. _"Bingo!"_

"Alright, let's do this. I know those things saw me, and while they were after Sam, now he's hopefully safe, and I'm the one they'll look for. They'll look for you as well, which, face it. You're a sore thumb as this hoopty mobile. Might as well be a VW bug for all you blend in with the smooth rides in this area."

The radio squawked "Girlfriend!" in brassy urban tones once, before the brakes slammed on, and the door flung open.

"What?"

Mikaela's protest was lost as the car shook her out, then sped off. Mikaela felt as naked and vulnerable as she had at the industrial scrapyard, without the dubious safety of the metal of the car surrounding her.

She was not alone on the curb for long, though, as a yellow car, not the same Camaro as earlier, streaked back to her, opening the passenger door for her to get back in. Sleek, stylish, new, and with all the thrum of the four hundred twenty odd horses that a modern Camaro could harness purring through the sleek body of the car.

"This? This is good," Mikaela said, before letting herself slide into the passenger seat and then over the console. The last thing they needed was to get picked up for shenanigans by the cops. If Bumblebee could scan the radio to make soundbites, it was a very real possibility the Saleen cop car could listen in on the police scanners and know just where they were if they got into a traffic stop.

`~`~`~`~`

The streaking meteorites had slipped through the sky and done their damage without Mikaela to bear witness to it, as she had dealt with Sam and the hospital. None of that mattered, as Bumblebee honed in on the source of the beacon he could feel pulsing in his lines.

Optimus Prime was on the same world as himself once more.

More, he had his command staff, at least most of it. That had to mean that the intel Bumblebee had sent back had been verified as accurate. That thought reverberated in his processor over and over; was the war so close to an end at last?

The Camaro was in high hopes and spirits, relegating the worry for the boy to the back of his processors for now. He had to refocus on Mikaela, now that she had become their primary interface to human society.

As he pulled in, guided by his Prime's beacon, he took note of the new forms, knowing enough about each of them to know who had trans-scanned what. The small sporty Solstice would be Jazz. His nominally superior officer got a microburst greeting with warning not to clown too much. His information packet with the beacon had specified that Sam would be put more at ease if Jazz attempted to interact like a young urban male. However, in just the few hours Bumblebee had been with Mikaela, he was pretty certain such behavior would put her off.

The heavy-looking Topkick was Ironhide. Even in an alternative mode, those weapons were too distinctive for Bumblebee to overlook. Which meant the search-and-rescue vehicle, the Hummer, was Ratchet, and that made plenty of sense.

Even without the beacon guiding him in, Bumblebee never would have mistaken Optimus Prime for anyone but himself. He had found a powerfully regal vehicular form with the distinctive red flames of this war emblazoned on his blue base.

How much did they all hope and pray to see those flames muted to more stylistic lines?

"That's an odd bunch to see together. Tell me those are your friends, not the fake cop's," Mikaela said softly, obviously feeling slightly menaced by the aura of expectation in the vehicles they were approaching.

" _Friends will be friends..._ " sang out from the speakers, but it didn't quite eliminate the girl's entire fear of being crushed to nothingness from where Bumblebee was scanning her discreetly. That was okay. He would protect her, and Prime would calm her down.

`~`~`~`~`

Mikaela was a girl who had watched out for herself ever since she had been little, just her and her dad. Every instinct in her body was screaming for her to get free and clear of this before she got dragged any further into it.

Yet a deeper, stronger pull said that if she didn't stay in the middle of this, she'd just be a faceless victim of the coming storm, for that was what this strange, alien mechanoid people had to be. She had quickly slipped fully from the corrected 'it' to 'he' in regards to the car she was with. Now, she was on the verge of meeting four more.

She was pretty certain first contact was not supposed to be a thing like this at all, in a hidden alleyway, and only one human surrounded by five robots-in-disguise. It even felt like walking through a dream when she stopped to consider that she was so close to the center of events that could very well change the world.

"Umm, hello?" she said as she stepped out of the Camaro, standing just close enough to keep her hand on the front quarter panel.

The noise she had heard earlier with the Camaro and the evil assassin robots came back to her, much more clearly, as gears and metallic bodies were unfolded and straightened into humanoid shapes. She wasn't looking at the Hummer or the Topkick, she swiftly decided. Their faces looked... mean. The Topkick especially looked as if his face was a permanent scowl of anger.

The Solstice had a rounder shape to everything, more like the Camaro, and she found him to be a little more soothing in appearance. But when the last one unfolded, she found herself looking at the face of the largest on of them all, who knelt and leaned in close. He was overwhelming, and yet Mikaela stood her ground, mostly, backing up just enough that her thigh rested firmly against the yellow car.

"You are not Samuel Witwicky, but Bumblebee insists you will still be able to assist us," the very big mech, all reds and blues and silvers, said in a firm, resonant voice.

"Mikaela... Mikaela Banes. This is Bumblebee?" she asked, gaining her composure by concentrating on introductions, her hand on the hood of the Camaro. There was a rev of the engine that could only be described as hyper and happy to Mikaela's ear, and she turned her head to look at the the yellow car. "Okay. But I think you're faster than that."

"For relative speeds within appropriate class frames, you are correct, young femme," the former search and rescue vehicle said, and she had to study him then, because his voice sounded rich, but in different ways from the really big guy. "Ratchet, medical officer," he introduced once he had her attention. She decided he didn't look quite as scary now.

"Ironhide," the large, heavily gunned one told her with a gruff tone.

"He'd be the weapon's master, pretty lady." The shiny one who had been a Solstice leaned in a little, a glint of interest in his... eyes? Pinpointed lasers? "I'd be Jazz, master of style, smooth operations, and finding all the dirt I can on the Decepticons."

"The what?" Mikaela challenged the strange word, to try and gain back some semblance of an illusion that she was handling everything just fine.

"Excuse my men; it's been a long time since we have had to be social to anyone except ourselves," the tall one said. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots of Cybertron. We oppose the Decepticons, who seek to enslave the galaxy under the leadership of Megatron's long term plans."

"Since you, through Bumblebee, didn't kill me, allow me to be killed, and got Sam to medical care, I'm willing to trust you on what you say is going on," Mikaela said. "You need the glasses, Sam said."

"So Bumblebee informed me," Optimus told her, still folded down to be on her level. "We are seeking the AllSpark, which was lost long ago," he began, and Mikaela, despite her urge to run and say 'so long, see ya' both listened and watched the realistic holographic show Optimus added to it.

She wound up leaning full body against Bumblebee, and somehow, it felt like he was molding into place to be comfortably her support. When it all finished, Mikaela had visions of the fiery molten pits and destruction ruining her homeworld, and found she didn't like it one bit. Of course, she also had the slight problem of being very aware of her being a tiny person, one cog, and not an important one, in the world that this war had come to.

"If I get you the glasses, then you'll be able to do what you have to do, and then get this menace away from here?" Mikaela asked, hoping, and listened for Prime's response.

"I hope that it will be so simple, Mikaela," Optimus said, but the regret in his tone was heavy. "However, now that they are aware of your world and its resources, I can make no guarantees."

Mikaela sucked in a deep breath, then nodded. "Then we need to get moving before Sam's parents find out he's in the hospital, so I can get those glasses." She turned, and Bee opened the door for her, on the driver side again, and she slipped in to head toward the Witwicky household. It was a start, even if Optimus Prime didn't believe it would be a strong one, in saving Earth.

Maybe working together, it would be enough.

`~`~`~`~`

"Hi," Mikaela said to the faces of a pair of very befuddled parents, all cheer and light for their behalf. Bumblebee was around the corner, out of sight, as this wasn't going to work any other way. The rest... well, there were four more vehicles than belonged in this neighborhood right now, littering the streets closest to the house.

Mikaela had had to talk long and hard to convince them to stay on the streets and not move in to possibly dismantle the house in their need to get those glasses.

"I'm Mikaela, and Sam told me I could come study with him for the really huge exam tomorrow."

"He, umm, he's not here," Sam's father managed to say after he processed the really cute girl was here to spend time with his son. It made him feel such pride in the boy, despite the trouble of recent days.

"Oh, but you can come right in and wait for him to get here," Sam's mother told her. "It is a bit late for studying, but I guess with that grease smudge you must have a job?" she continued, making Mikaela conscious of two things. One was the smudge in question, gotten during the fight with the killer robots, and two was that she had lost her purse at some point in time.

"Umm, yeah, I help at a garage," Mikaela managed to say, trying to not worry about that psycho cop car scanning her identification in her purse if he found it. She slipped inside as Mrs. Witwicky moved, and looked around. "I hate to bother you, but could I get a glass of water?"

"Oh, yes! Right this way," the woman said in a perky manner that was kind of creepy. No wonder Sam was strange, if these were his parents. At least the woman was leading Mikaela where she needed to be.

As Mikaela was getting her drink, and spying where the backpack was, she was aware that time was limited. She was quite glad when fate intervened allowing Mikaela to use the phone ringing and distracting Sam's mom to swoop in on the backpack, swiftly rummaging for the glasses. She slipped them into her pocket as carefully as she could and was sitting at the table again when Mrs. Witwicky shrieked for her husband that Sam was at the hospital.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to hear that," Mikaela said, and she meant it, even as Mr. Witwicky was demanding to know how and why. "I'll just go on, and check back tomorrow on how he's doing."

Unsurprisingly, she was barely acknowledged, and she managed to slip out the door, going to find Bumblebee.

As she turned the corner to where he was, three things assaulted her at once. One, Bumblebee was peeling off down the street at speed, pursued by various black, unmarked vehicles. Two, She could hear the other Autobots coming her way. Three, other black vehicles were turning toward the street the Witwicky house was on.

"Hell," she muttered under her breath, and started looking for a way to avoid being noticed. Then the silver Solstice was right beside her, door swinging open just enough, and Mikaela took the invitation for what it was.

"Not going to let anything happen to you, Mikaela, but you might just want to buckle up," Jazz said via the radio speakers, just as one of the black cars took notice of them. Mikaela hastened to do as told, and settled back to try and not panic as Jazz went into evasive tactics. "Prime asks if you got the glasses, little lady," Jazz asked calmly, confident he would evade pursuit.

"Yes." She found herself nodding even though she wasn't sure he could see her now.

"That's cool work then, Mikaela. Now... we just gotta shake the bogeys, and get to where we can decipher the clue they … " His voice faded out, and then she could have sworn she felt a shiver run through the seat she sat in.

Mikaela looked around for the pursuit as Jazz dropped into a casual cruise on a normal street, and could not see any signs of it. Apparently the silver car was very adept at losing followers.

"New plan; they caught Bumblebee," Jazz finally came back. "Ironhide convinced Prime that either these turkeys are Decepticon agents, or they know something about us they shouldn't. Either way, we need to know why they came after us, and get Bee back." He paused, then let his voice go gentle and worried. "Unless you were thinking you would just drop off the glasses with us and walk away from all this?"

Mikaela wished that she believed that was even possible. But Prime's answer stayed with her, and she knew she was in this, all the way. "My planet; at least one of us should be fighting for it?"

Jazz chuckled, though with a bitter edge. "You got spirit. I'll give you that."

`~`~`~`~`

Following unmarked black cars and their attendant helicopters was, Mikaela discovered shortly, a very bad idea. While Jazz took every precaution to remain unseen, it was barely an hour into trailing them, and the captured Bumblebee, that she found herself being held in the seat snugly by the seatbelt as Jazz again had to try and break free of their attempts to capture or deactivate him.

"They've got to be scanning for something distinctive to you and your kind," Mikaela said, when they were pushed further and further from Bumblebee's trail in trying to shake the pursuit.

"Sweetheart, I'm about as distinctive as a mech can get," Jazz chuckled. "But you got a right good point there." He grew quiet, a sign that he was talking to the others who were spaced out further and had so far gone unnoticed. When his speakers came to life again, there was a slight chuckle. "Ironhide's beating himself up for not realizing. He and Ratch are cooking up a scramble job. Prime's staying on the trail."

"Good." She didn't want anything happening to the Camaro that had protected her, not when he seemed to be really, truly passionate about doing the right thing. Somehow, they would save him.

`~`~`~`~`

"It's a dam." Mikaela stared and stared at the holographic projection Prime was showing them all, now that they had rendezvoused just out of sight of the place Bumblebee had been taken.

"As in 'give a...'?" Jazz asked, chuckling with his little joke, and Mikaela smiled for his attempt to keep her spirits up.

"No, as in 'stop the floods and generate power while you do it'," she answered, to clarify for the others. English was at best a very ugly, imprecise language, her fourth grade teacher had once said. It had stuck with her, as through the years the words were used to lie and connive and hide true motives all around her.

"When they took Bumblebee inside through an aperture that is now well-hidden, I sensed even more power than I can feel pulsing out through the cabling leading away," Optimus Prime told her. "The dam conceals much, I believe."

Mikaela studied the holographic image a little longer, then pulled out the glasses. "We know where Bumblebee is. Do these have any clues for us to add to the mystery of the dam?"

Jazz took them from her, his forefinger and thumb handling them delicately by one side piece. An inspection of the fragile things led to him exclaiming sharply in what could only be described as an electronic expletive, just from tone, Mikaela decided. The next thing she knew, he had focused an optical laser beam on the glass of one lens, causing it to refract and display something that meant nothing to her, and everything to the robots. Almost as one, when Jazz turned off the beam, their heads turned back to the dam.

"The AllSpark," Optimus Prime breathed, his tone so complex in the nuances of both worship and guilt, leaving Mikaela to wonder at the blunt facts he had presented around deciding to jettison the thing rather than allow Megatron to have it.

She looked up as an aircraft passed overhead, going straight for the dam. She chewed on her lip, then made up her mind. "They have answers. We need them. Jazz, you're the smallest one here; care to help me get inside?"

"Sounds like just my kind of party," Jazz crooned, flipping in acrobatic grace down from mech to car, door swinging open for her.

"Here goes nothing..." Mikaela muttered, as she stepped into the waiting comfort of the Solstice's lush upholstery.

"Not 'nothing'; our hopes rest on your success," Prime said before the door shut and Jazz took her to a new date with destiny. She just wished destiny's weight weren't so squarely on her shoulders right now.

`~`~`~`~`

Trust a robot to be able to cue in on an automatic 'garage' door for a super secret base in the middle of a huge hydroelectric dam. Mikaela cringed a little as they slipped inside, but apparently the aircraft they had seen was causing havoc for the secret base's personnel. Mikaela snuck along the wall toward the largest bay of activity, while Jazz proved that robots twice her size could be very stealthy too.

Which lasted as long as it took for him to see something menacing in a huge block of ice, she noted. Flashes of Optimus Prime's history lesson rocked through her, and she dimly made out the shape of a the hunk in the ice as matching the overall shape of the conquering Lord High Protector he had spoken of. Jazz had gone stiff and rigid, metal creaking so ominously that she was sure they would be seen. His ambient presence intensified, making her hair stand on end, as if there were now far more power coursing openly through his system at the sight before them.

Megatron.

Mikaela sucked in her breath, putting the pieces together. The worst bad guy, in the same holding spot as the powerful talisman both sides were hunting, seemed like a very ugly picture, and she started looking for other ways to disrupt any plans the robot assassins might be making concerning both their leader and the AllSpark.

She saw a man in a suit who looked familiar from television, a few guys in uniform, and the men in black that she presumed had been driving the unmarked black vehicles. The obvious civilians in their midst looked so far out of their depths that Mikaela almost pitied them. Beyond that … was Bumblebee, and they were hurting him, trying to freeze him the same way they had frozen the giant enemy of the Autobots.

They had no way of telling enemy from ally, and that was going to cost Earth if they didn't get shown the error of their ways.

Mikaela didn't even hesitate, because Bumblebee's choked cries were on her conscience. She didn't stop, not when she could see the Earth broken wide open to harvest all of its ores and geothermal energies. She plunged ahead, because Optimus Prime wanted better than he ever expected to see happen, and she felt the same way.

"Hey, morons, ever think of asking questions and being idiots later?" she demanded after running a bit away from the still hidden Jazz, and into the open.

"Who are you? How did you get in here? Fan out, people. She can't be alone!" the head monkey in a black suit spat out.

"I wouldn't be alone, but you guys kidnapped my partner who happened to be looking for help to keep some other aliens from kicking our asses and taking over our planet!" she railed at him, stabbing a finger toward Bumblebee, and successfully evading the men who tried to take her down.

"Hold it, Simmons, and lets hear what she's got to say!" the vaguely familiar politician-looking guy said. "I'm Defense Secretary John Keller, young lady. You are acquainted with … these aliens?"

"I've almost been killed by the other side, and saved by that one!" She dodged another swipe from one of the men in black, and had to look gratefully at the soldier who decided obeying Keller was the better idea and got in the way of any more attempts.

"Two sides, then," Keller said, looking at the soldier who seemed to be in charge.

"At least. Now..."

"...we're smack dab in the middle of their war," Mikaela said swiftly.

"How do you know which side to trust? Ha! You can't!" the head monkey in a suit, Simmons, said.

"One saves me. Two try to kill my friend and me. No offense, but I'm sticking with the saving kind, no matter what the state of their own ideologies are in the contest of their own world," Mikaela snapped at him. "Now stop hurting the one who helped me!" she yelled.

There was a flurry of activity, but the net result was one very scared, very hurt Bumblebee bearing his weapon around in various threatening poses, until Mikaela ran through the line of soldiers and suits to get to him, stepping up on one foot to get higher along his frame to lean in and reassure him with her trusting lean on him.

"It's okay, 'Bee... shh, it's okay. Yeah, already figured out who the big ugly is, and more, what you were looking for is here," she reassured him to quiet his nervous sounding chirrups.

"Just what is he looking for, Miss?" the leader of the soldiers asked her directly. "Who is the big ugly, as you called it?"

"A power source, for their planet, that was lost. They call it the AllSpark. As for the thing in the ice, his name is Megatron, and he's the main cause of the war, according to what I have learned so far," Mikaela said, not moving one inch from Bumblebee. She would talk, keep their attention, and let Jazz do the scouting. They needed the AllSpark and then they needed free. But she wasn't going to reveal her other ally until she was certain the men in black were under the control of the politician and these soldiers, even if that felt like trusting the devil against the demons.

Bumblebee must have guessed her intent, because he stood stolidly with her, making no move away, even though she could feel his anticipation for finding their lost AllSpark. That almost made her stumble, but she was positive she could actually tell, without any doubt, that Bumblebee had consciously chosen to stay by her, and she didn't think he had yet spoken to Jazz.

"Miss..." Keller paused, his look and tone inviting her to say her name.

"Mikaela. Just Mikaela. Just wanting to survive all of this falling down on us, really, and in the position of having been caught up in them being here," she said, desperation to see this whole situation resolved in her voice.

"So what do we need to …"

The head of the military men had to break off his words as a sudden, hard slam against the outer dam's concrete rippled through the complex, and alarms began blaring.

" _It's just the beast under your bed, In your closet, in your head_ ," Bumblebee told them in Metallica's growled lyrics.

"Trouble," Mikaela said, before breaking to run to Jazz, Bumblebee covering her. Surprisingly, though the men in black protested, the military men joined her, complete with Keller, as they decided the best place in a war with killer robots was on the side less willing to squash the humans.

`~`~`~`~`

Outside, a stealthy Decepticon infiltrator had given wide berth to the gathering of Autobots, and waited patiently. His primary objective had changed, and once his symbiotic handler and partner had gotten himself back together, Barricade had pursued from a distance.

Then, when the mountain of concrete and power works had been opened for one of the Autobots and their new human ally to slip in, Barricade and Frenzy had scanned a radiation that was everything they could have hoped for, if such an emotion was admitted to among Decepticons. Barricade, leery of the Prime's power, had called for reinforcements.

`~`~`~`~`

The first slam of a Decepticon salvo against the dam was followed with another, and then another, as Bumblebee and Mikaela hurried to reach Jazz. The spy had made it past the humans in the complex to the giant cube calling to his spark, pulling at him to be reunited with it. There was power radiating out from the AllSpark, power that had touched how many ever humans in the course of its incarceration among them, and Jazz suspected that the humans it had touched were not quite what the racial norm was. The back of his processor filed it away, something to investigate if they all made it out of this mission alive. His spark ached, though, to feel the artifact's brimming power, and know that it represented all the lost, fallen warriors as well as the unborn that Prime had never been able to call forth.

"Who's that?" the head military officer demanded of Mikaela as they skidded into the room with the AllSpark, seeing Jazz standing in front of the great cube, contemplating it.

"Friend!" Mikaela said, even as she felt a wave of … energy roiling off the cube. She stared at it in both fear and sudden understanding. The AllSpark, fountain of energy and creation to the Cybertronians, was not just a mindless artifact. The source of new sparks was alive with the energies imbued in their creation, as well as with a sentience that was somehow both more primal and more intuitive than those it gave life to.

"Plan of action?" he asked, somewhat wryly but not without respect for the fact she knew more about what was going on than he did.

"Jazz?" Mikaela called. "JAZZ!" she shouted a second time when he did not answer her. The pitch of her voice seemed to break some thrall the cube held, or maybe it was the sudden whine of generators coming online to replace the main power.

"Is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?" the soldier nearest the leader asked, looking back ominously toward the room with the big ugly on ice.

"Epps, you just delight in breaking bad news," the captain growled at him.

"Someone make a plan..." Keller said, admitting he was out of his depths, and accepting a personal firearm from one of the soldiers.

Jazz, having been in the process of accessing his deep databases for exactly how to handle the AllSpark, shifted his position and raised his hands up, manipulating the energy shield around the cube. Once he had found the right pattern, the cube began to collapse in on itself, shunting most of its matter into the dimension it tapped into, the subspace realm that most Cybertronians had access to.

" _We're on a highway to hell..._ ," Bumblebee chimed in before shifting genre and song. " _I ran so far away_."

"We gotta talk about your taste in all these oldies, 'Bee," Mikaela grumbled even as her eyes stayed riveted on Jazz's efforts to make the cube small enough to transport. "But yeah. We run. We get out of this concrete tomb, get that thing back to their leader, and run until we've got the space to make the next move."

"I hate running. I am not Will Smith," the soldier named Epps grumbled. "Do I look like a Nike model or an action star?"

"Wouldya just shut up and figure out what kind of wheels and weapons we actually have? Or, maybe, use your magic and get us some support against whatever's out there!" the captain told his right hand man.

"Keep your shirt on, man," Epps countered, but he was scanning around for whatever he could use.

"Mikaela, time to ditch the scene," Jazz said as the cube suddenly dropped into one of his open hands and he turned to get closer to her.

"No keys!" Epps snapped off as he darted over and pulled a tarp off three black, nominally civilian hummers.

Bumblebee flicked a wave of energy out, and all three vehicles revved to life.

"Now that's one way to hot-wire a car," Keller commented, moving with the soldiers into the vehicles. Somehow, the very annoying agent of this black box operation was in the same vehicle. "Shouldn't you be shutting this place down and defending your country by doing it?" Keller demanded.

"I am. As soon as the generators go past the three minute mark with no code for systems failure, this place starts flooding with water from outside."

"Simmons, I take it back. You're not as stupid as you look."

Mikaela found herself opening her hands as Jazz's single hand twitched in approaching her. The cube flicked through the air, and landed securely in her palms, despite the impossibility of its very existence in a space so small. Jazz then hurtled down into vehicular mode, door thrown open, and she got in. Bumblebee transformed more painfully, roaring ahead of Jazz with every intention of clearing the way. Behind them, the three Hummers followed, as other humans scrambled for more hidden vehicles and exits, before that ice gave way or the waters rushed in to drown the complex.

Outside, the shuddering vibrations of an assault continued.

`~`~`~`~`

"Optimus, do we engage?" Ironhide asked, when their leader made no effort to move toward the Decepticon attackers. His voice and energy all flared with eagerness to go teach them a thing or three.

"No."

Even Ratchet stared at their leader for that answer.

"Position yourselves carefully, and be prepared to cover our people as they exit. But do not engage until necessary." His optics pinned Ironhide specifically. "Necessary meaning in defense of Jazz, Bumblebee, and Mikaela."

"Your command, Prime," Ironhide grumbled.

`~`~`~`~`

"Don't leave me out of the loop," Mikaela managed to say when she felt Jazz communicating as they roared out of the dam's hidden exit.

"Don't you worry none, pretty lady," he reassured her the instant before a near miss with a missile strike made her actually see the challenge between them and the relative safety of the other Autobots.

A jet of some kind, a helicopter, and the robot assassin cop car were all between the dam and where they had left the Autobots.

"You just hang tight to that cube, Mikaela, no matter what, until we're back with Optimus," Jazz reassured her, redirecting her attention to the alien artifact in her hands.

The cube was about the size of a soccer ball, but all etched planes and sharp corners. As Mikaela looked at it, she thought it was glowing faintly, and squinted to see better...

`~`~`~`~`

Starscream had the small silver Autobot lined up perfectly, ignoring the bright yellow one in favor of the true target. He could hear the song of the AllSpark now, even as he heard the demanding call of his Lord's spark inside the human bunker.

All his hopes and dreams were pinned to being the one to recover the artifact, to undo the effects of the war on all he ever had wanted. Freedom, pure and simple, under a rule that was his own, so no one could ever make him be what he was not. That was all Starscream desired, and it was going to be his as he fired again.

`~`~`~`~`

… causing the glow to expand, so far as she could perceive, until it felt like the glow encompassed the whole car.

The explosion of a missile directly in front of them, but clearly in the air, was enough to make Mikaela scream even as Jazz evasively swerved despite it being too late.

"What was that?" Jazz and Mikaela asked aloud, but wasted no time speeding through the cloud of smoke and fiery debris, followed by the three human vehicles and preceded by Bumblebee.

"Maybe 'Scream's playing games, but this is one pits-slagging time to be doing it!" Jazz grumbled.

Mikaela felt her attention being pulled back down to the cube she held, and suddenly wasn't sure at all that she hadn't had something to do with it. Or at least, that the ultra powerful artifact in her hands hadn't.

`~`~`~`~`

Keller looked as the unfriendly forces turned away from pursuing them, and then turned his gaze to Lennox. "What happens now?"

"Bad things," Lennox and Epps both replied, as Lennox floored the accelerator.

"Only reason we can think they'd back off is that either something nastier is in front of us, or the big ugly in the ice is about to join the party."

"Or maybe," Simmons interjected, "they're afraid of _them_!"

'Them' was a 30 foot tall red and blue robot bristling with menace and a powerful gun, a black dangerous mech not that much smaller with even more firepower, and a rescue-green robot laying down suppressive fire for the incoming party. The yellow Camaro screeched to a halt in front of them and turned to add his own shots after transforming, letting the silver sports car streak on by with his cargo.

".....Human allies...." The radio came to life with a buzz of static. "Assistance requested in finding a safe point to transfer the AllSpark into our possession from Mikaela's."

"Epps, home in on that frequency and tell them they got it. Then get us some heavy air support against those things behind us," Lennox ordered. "Secretary..."

"I'm in this to the bitter end, Captain."

"So we all are," Lennox answered Keller's immediate answer.

`~`~`~`~`

As they all hauled aft down the highway, Jazz grew increasingly concerned about the artifact he carried being in the human's possession. She was strong, and he could really admire how she had thrown in with their cause, but something in the way she kept staring at the glyphs etched into the cube made him uncomfortable.

He didn't have that much time to worry, as he had to concentrate on keeping his frame intact. A full cadre of Constructicons were on the highway, trying to herd them into thicker traffic, or worse, into the city that sat just to the side of their escape route.

`~`~`~`~`

Mikaela was, as Jazz worried, entranced by the AllSpark, much as he had been when he first tried to comprehend how to collapse it down. Bumblebee would have been the better carrier, as he had been taught by Prime himself how to handle the cube, but Jazz had been in the better position. Now, it did not matter, and Mikaela was beginning to see that her life would not ever be the same.

On all sides of her, she could feel four kinds of energy. One wanted to destroy her protector, take what she held, what was holding her enraptured. The other, like her protector, was driven to keep her safe. A third energy was weaker, but just as intensely focused on her safety, because of the artifact. The fourth level of energy was that of fear. Whether it was fear from the humans seeing this chase, or fear from the Autobots at knowing how dangerous the situation had become, it radiated palpably and coiled under her skin.

Humans, most of them, were not ready, causing the Cybertronians around the human and artifact to feel their transformation circuits lock. Only in these alternative modes could they battle, ruling out their more potent weapons. It was the AllSpark's gift to the younger race it had watched over and been manipulated by for the long wait.

That changed the nature of the battle. No Constructicon could rule the road as the Autobots did, especially with Prime on the field. The city was bypassed, and an alternative exit taken, heading out into the great desert.

Mikaela knew it was just in time, as an energy so like the first, but magnified ten times over, rose up in the back of her awareness.

Megatron, despoiler of Cybertron, had arisen.

`~`~`~`~`

::Transformation locks have been removed, just as quick as they had been engaged,:: Ratchet reported. ::I don't know what kind of coding that was, but I'm not the one who pulled it either.::

::Optimus....:: Ironhide growled in warning, his tactical displays lighting up with the threat behind them. He focused, trying to see just what kind of firepower they could expect as his HUD evaluated the new arrival to the battle.

::I know!:: the leader's tone was harsh, but it reflected his frustration with the situation. They needed more fighters than they had to handle a full Constructicon cadre, in addition to the infiltration units Barricade and Blackout, as well as both Starscream and Megatron. Though Ironhide had meant well, there was no one else, or should be no one else, outside of himself and Starscream who could tell exactly where Megatron currently was as well as Megatron's motivations. That was the curse of being at least partially bonded to the ruthless mech.

::The humans say help will be here.:: Ratchet, as always, held out the dogged hope.

::Their time units place help here after we engage.:: Optimus weighed their options, did not like them, and then snarled. ::Be certain to keep at least one Constructicon out of the action, Ratchet. Ironhide, you will concentrate on disrupting the rotor-craft, and Starscream if you can. Bumblebee, assist Ratchet.::

He did not have to say who his target would be. Jazz was not best pleased to be left out of the fight either, but he was encasing the AllSpark currently. They continued to run, straight into the desert, away from civilization as it stood on this planet, to fight a battle that might well decide the fate of two planets. They would run until Megatron arrived, or until the ground favored the Autobots.

Jazz prayed for that latter option.

`~`~`~`~`

Mikaela did not understand the buzzing sounds in her head, not as words, but the communication was inherently known to her. Plans were being made, plans that made her, and the artifact, the center of the action but only as observers.

The minute they were engaged from the air, though, all of those plans changed. The AllSpark let the transformations into warriors happen, and then focused on the willful child-woman holding it.

They had work to do as much as the Autobots did.

 _Mikaela, accept me._

A burst of confusion from the human preceded the AllSpark baring itself to her, and then there was just one question.

 _You'll help me protect my world?_

 _I hope to help us all protect both worlds, by the time this is done._

 _Let's do this, then._

`~`~`~`~`

Jazz eluded Barricade just as an explosion in the sky made it clear the humans were testing what weapons they had against Blackout. He stayed away from Barricade while being perfectly aware he did not want to leave Prime's back open either. The bigger mech was waging a personal battle that would almost certainly end in the death of one leader or the other, as Prime kept Megatron from reaching Jazz and the prize he guarded.

Evading Barricade, though, meant losing sight of just where Starscream was, and the Constructicons were effectively preventing Ironhide from laying down his heavy fire. Ratchet had taken several small injuries, none crippling, but Bumblebee might very well bleed out all his energon soon if he could not get his systems to clamp off the loss of one arm to the mixer's vicious attack.

Starscream's blast took out the ground in front of Jazz, catapulting him up and out of his alt-mode, hands scrambling to catch the ejected passenger and protect her with her all-important burden.

He wasn't expecting to wind up holding something that looked suspiciously like a near-human sized femme, in burnished steel armor plating, glowing from the inside as if its entire frame were filled with spark energy.

`~`~`~`~`

Mikaela felt the flood of energy throughout her body, watched the cube flow into and along her body. It penetrated with cellular level tendrils, lacing through her bones and muscles, into her nerves, to make them a single being. The AllSpark had always been sentient, but in this primal plane, it required someone to focus its energies. The AllSpark's wielder was supposed to be the Prime of the current generation, but his spark was stained with deaths, even as was the Lord High Protector's. While the AllSpark understood the brutal necessity of its children's choices in some parts of its experience, it was the medium of a new host, one that truly only sought to protect her world and people, that was preferable.

The sound of Jazz was decipherable this time, as the AllSpark burned the inhuman language into her brain. Her throat would never be able to produce it without modification, but she could understand and hear all of it now.

"I think this situation just changed for the very strange, everyone!" Jazz called, even as he forced himself to not close his hands around her.

"Do not worry, Jazz," Mikaela said in English. "I know what I must do. The AllSpark guides me."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Jazz muttered, still in Cybertronian, as he set her down despite his urge to hold her safe warring with a deep-coded command to place her on the ground.

Mikaela walked directly to the two gargantuans fighting hand-to-hand, energon spilling down both battle-scarred frames. A missile directed at her was thrown to one side by the energy field, the concussive force rippled back against the one who had fired it, driving Starscream from the fight.

The AllSpark knew that its chaos-bringer, in true Starscream behavior, would flee the field when the factors had changed beyond his ability to analyze.

"MEGATRON!"

The roar of the human's voice should not have been audible over the clash of the two struggling titans, and yet Megatron forced his brother's blade away and kicked him off to see just who dared summon him by name so impudently.

`~`~`~`~`

Optimus Prime had been hearing the whispers of the AllSpark since it had been released from the concrete tomb. As he fell heavily away from Megatron, that one mech in all of creation least worthy of knowing the purity of that connection, Optimus heard the whispers turn into the full cries of the dead, the lost, the uncreated. He clutched at his helm, sword flicked away in favor of his hand, for the cry was too much to bear. He was Prime; it was his duty to safeguard his people. Though he had chosen to fight only to guard as many as he could, it had been a full betrayal of what he should be, to turn his weapons, his hands against his own kind.

The AllSpark was there, but it had chosen another to heed its call.

`~`~`~`~`

"You dare defile the AllSpark, puny fleshling?!" Megatron roared as he saw, and scanned, the lifesource on the ground so far from him.

"There has been only one true defilement, my creation," Mikaela said, though her voice was no longer her own. It was laced with power, with the reaching energies of the AllSpark.

"I purified our world of the weak, of the worthless, of the unworthy!" Megatron crowed. "And with you as my power source, I will end this war for once and all, to rule in complete control of Cybertron and all her people!"

"How can you, when all her people, save a very scant few, are within me now?" As the words came from Mikaela's throat, the AllSpark reached out and took hold of Megatron as cleanly as it had Optimus Prime.

But where Optimus had never even thought to resist the will of the cube, no matter its current form, Megatron had never submitted to anything without fighting it.

Death after death rocked through the arrogance of the Lord High Protector. All that he had been chosen for was a mockery. His guardianship of the Prime, of Cybertron, had turned to rot and decay, mechs fallen and left to rust where they dropped. The AllSpark fed all of this directly into his processor, with the sheer agony of the forceful reparation of sparks to their creative well foremost in the experience.

Megatron stumbled to a knee, overwhelmed by the brutal honesty of what his deeds had wrought in the society that had nurtured him and given him the freedom to become as he wished to be.

How much had he wasted? In seeing the sick, the weak, the lowly pervading Cybertron's stagnant ways, he had failed to see the ones who wished for change as much as he did. He had failed to take into account that his own brother had chafed under some of Sentinel Prime's teachings. He had not wanted to hear the pleas for help in a system he despised before unilaterally overthrowing it all, heedless of the collateral damage.

Then the AllSpark let him hear more. The death, the dying, the destruction he had caused fell away, and now he could hear muted, faint whispers dotted around the galaxy. He knew these quiet voices were all that he had left to rule over. Some were the Decepticon voices. Others were but Autobots. Yet more were the barely sentient drone creations, all that their world could produce without energon to truly nurture hatchlings into true individuality.

"Go home. Prepare the world once more for all of us," the AllSpark/Mikaela entreated.

Megatron felt the pressure of what he had been created to be at odds with what he had made of himself. All that had been pressed in on him was true. All that would remain would die, because of him, because of Optimus resisting him.

But he was no one's errand boy, no one to be ordered about!

With a snarl, he lunged back to his feet, slamming a hand down toward the small, puny, insignificant creature that had defiled the most sanctified relic of his entire people.

"I tried to be nice." Those cryptic words precipitated a flare of energy that broke the dimensional folds around the Earth, cracking open a tunnel in the space and time continuum of this plane of existence. The energy flared out, and though Megatron resisted, it did him as little good as it did Barricade, Frenzy, Blackout, or any of the Constructicons on the field. Only Starscream was far enough from the periphery of the effect utilized by the AllSpark to bring peace, even if only a temporary one, to this battlefield.

The energy washed away, leaving nothing but desert, Autobots, and one unarmored Mikaela Banes dropping unconscious on the ground.

`~`~`~`~`

Mikaela awoke to find two human faces, old and young, as well as a very mobile, curious robotic one hovering over her. She was not holding the cube any longer, but it was still with her, infused into her at a cellular level, with its physical form wrapped around her beneath her clothing, hidden where skin was exposed.

"Young lady, are you alright now?" Keller asked.

"I think so." Mikaela pushed herself up, slowly, assisted by a third human she had not yet noticed.

"I could cite statute and clause about how everything that has happened falls under the articles of Roswell," the suit from the dam was saying, which made Keller look pointedly at him. "However in light of the whole 'probably just saved the world thing', I'll shut up now," he finished.

"Do you remember anything, Mikaela Banes, of what just occurred?" the expressive robot face asked her, and she had to smile at his patent concern, not just for her, but for his species that radiated up the link with the AllSpark.

"Every single bit, up to and including proving Megatron was not the baddest bitch on this block." She reached out and touched his face, moved by the lingering sadness and guilt inside him. "The AllSpark and I made a great team, Prime. It wants you to know it still loves you, and you are still Prime. It just... has been inundated in the deaths of your kind, and then it was aware of the killing nature of my people. It's tired of being the cause of pain, when all it ever wished for was creation."

Optimus cycled the air through his fans, then nodded slowly. "Perhaps... I can find the proper path again."

"It seems to thinks you will." Mikaela looked at the soldiers, the Secretary of Defense, and beyond them the line of approaching military and suits. "I don't think we need to be interviewed over this," she muttered, her tone very much indicating both human and artifact.

"Very few saw your part, little lady," Keller said warmly. "Just let your silver friend there keep you out of sight, and I'll handle the rest with Mister Prime here."

At Keller's words, Mikaela turned, seeing Jazz leaning back on his elbows, splayed out to the dying sun of the evening sky while Ratchet worked on repairing Bumblebee's arm. Lennox and Epps quickly shuffled positions to cover her run for Jazz's protection, a slight smile on Epps' lips.

"How many people would just shit their pants to know a seventeen year old girl with balls of steel just saved the planet?" Epps muttered under his breath to Lennox.

"Just about every single one that thinks their balls are made out of that steel," Lennox agreed, before readying how they were going to swing this nasty piece of business.

`~`~`~`~`

 _Epilogue_

"So we did wind up telling certain people about you," Lennox said as Mikaela was looking around the big, shiny new haven for her friends. Sam was with her, looking far better, even if Bumblebee wouldn't let him step ten paces away.

"And..." She knew this was not going to go well. On cue, a pompous windbag from Washington DC stepped into the huge common bay.

"It was specifically stated in the agreement that the knowledge of the sentient alien species was to be limited to certain civilians, of which neither of these are on the list!"

Bumblebee stepped forward aggressively at his tone of voice, but Optimus Prime reached out, hand splayed wide open on the chest of his talented scout.

"You will recall that I objected. Certain civilians not on your bureaucratic lists are of importance to my people." Optimus truly hoped the call for further Autobot assistance came swiftly, preferably in the form of Prowl, who was more suited to bureaucracy.

"There is a security crisis just in your existence! No matter that you say it will take those... vile machines an age to traverse from Cyberchronia to here!" the DC suit railed.

"Cybertron." Mikaela spoke up and walked to just in front of him. "Sam and I belong. You do not. Go away. You're upsetting my very tall friends."

"You can't just act like you're part of this... asylum seeking bunch, miss."

"Mikaela, Sam..." Optimus began. "I hereby make you citizens of Cybertron."

The suit started to splutter, but Lennox started laughing. "Buddy, I think it's time for you to go fill out some more diplomatic immunity paperwork, unless you really, really want to push the point with the big guy."

Once he had been herded out, Sam looked at Optimus, and then all around. "So, even though I didn't get to be the cool kid and save the planet like Mikaela did, I get to stick around?"

"Samuel, you led us to what we needed. As much as the AllSpark has changed Mikaela, to where it is not incorrect to call her a Cybertronian, it is also true that your ancestor's encounter with Megatron left an indelible mark on your own coding. The Decepticons will return. When they do, we will need your bravery, Mikaela's skill, and all the resources of Lennox and Epps to fight them."

"I'm cool with that." He looked up at Bumblebee, and the quiet rapture between them made Mikaela push her friend toward his car, while going her own way to Jazz's side.

"Hey, you don't have Bee's crap taste in music, do you?" she asked him, a little shyly now that there wasn't a fight that made it necessary to be with him.

"Sister, you are going to love what I have picked up." He opened the door for her, and she accepted the invitation, just as she had accepted her place in a new world order the rest of the planet couldn't even know about. "But what I'm dying to know, is just how you knocked Megs to a knee?"

Mikaela shrugged, slipping the seatbelt on. "Saw a movie once. Guy loved a girl so much he came back to make things right. Got stuck with the pain of her dying in his head, and in the end, he threw all that at the bad guy to distract him."

"Seems you and me are going to have a popcorn night, Mikki," he told her as he drove away under the watchful eyes of his cadre mates.

`~`~`~`~`


End file.
